Friday, October 24, 2014

We are looking to hire someone to help improve the quality of BRMS and
BPM Suite platforms. These are the productised versions of the Drools and
jBPM open source projects.

The role will involve improving our test coverage, diagnosis problems,
creating reproducers for problems as well as helping fix them. You’ll
also be responsible for helping to setup and maintain our continuous
integration environment to help streamline the various aspects involved
in getting timely high quality releases out.

So if you love Drools and jBPM, and want to help make them even better and even more robust - then this is the job for you :)

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Red Hat is organizing two 3-day workshop for partners about various technologies, including JBoss BPM Suite, FSW and xPaas. Both will take place in the next few weeks, one in Madrid and one in London, and I'll be attending both.

Important: this event is for Red Hat Channel Partners***, not end users or customers.

Come spend three days with Red Hat experts and learn about JBoss BPM
Suite, Fuse Service Works, and OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service. This
three-day master class will include product presentations, roadmaps,
industrial use cases, panel discussions, and hands-on lab sessions, as
well as the opportunity to talk one-on-one with the experts.

The speakers of the events are: middleware product leaders, principal
architects and partner enablement experts. Many of them work as commiters in many open source communities. This is a great chance to meet the worldwide experts!

Madrid: Tuesday, Oct 21 - Thursday Oct 23 2014

London: Monday, Oct 27 - Wednesday, Oct 29 2014

This is pretty last minute, but if you're interested and (would like to) qualify as Red Hat Partner, ask for an invitation from emea-partner-team@redhat.com

*** Red Hat Partners create an eco-system where they are building solutions or offering services based on existing Red Hat products. For example, they might be delivering service projects or IT product as ISV partners, or delivering solutions based on Red Hat products as system integrators. For more info, check out http://www.redhat.com/en/partners

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

The bits have been out for a few weeks now (as we wanted to wait on the new website for the public announcement), but we are now glad to announce that jBPM 6.1 is available and you can find all information about it on our new website.

jBPM 6.1 comes with a ton of smaller improvements and bug fixes (done over the last few months
on top of 6.0.1.Final), and also includes some important new features, adding to the foundation
delivered as part of jBPM 6.0.

Embedding forms in external applications

Now you can embed and run process/task forms that live inside the Kie-Workbench just adding a JavaScript
library to your webapps.
Look at the Using forms on client applications section
to see the full functionality and usage examples.

Attaching documents to forms

Added new file type to manage upload documents on forms and store them on process variables. Using the
Pluggable Variable Persistence you'll be able to create your own Marshalling
Strategy and store the document contents on different systems (Database, Alfresco, Google Docs...)
or use the default implementation and store them in your File System.

Web Service (SOAP) interface for remote API

The execution server, that is part of the jbpm-console web tooling, now also comes
with a Web Service interface (in addition to the existing REST, JMS and Java client interfaces).

Deployment descriptors can be configured on various levels for enhanced flexibility to
allow simple override functionality. Detailed definition of deployment descriptor can be found
in the Deployment descriptors section.

Role-based authorization at runtime for process definitions and process instances

The process definition and process instance view in the jbpm console now also take the
role-based access control restrictions into account that can be defined on the project the
process is defined in. You can limit the visibility of a project (or repository as a whole) by
associating some roles with it that are required to be able to see the project (or
repository). This can be done when creating the repository, or bu using the command line
interface to connect to the execution server. The deployment descriptor (see previous section)
also allows you to further customize these roles at deployment time. At runtime, the views
will check if the current logged in user has one of the necessary roles to be able to see that
process. If not, the user will not see this process or process instance in the process
definition or process instance list respectively.

jBPM installer updates

The installer is updated to support:

Wildfly 8.1 as application server

Eclipse BPMN2 Modeler 1.0.2

Eclipse Kepler SR2

jBPM Spring integration

Spring integration has been improved to allow complete configuration of jBPM runtime using
Spring XML. That essentially means there are number of factory beans provided as part of
droolsjbpm-integration module that significanlty simplifies configuration of jBPM. Moreover it
allows various configuration options such as:

Other

Task service (query) improvements, significantly speeding up queries when you have a
large numbers of tasks in the database.

Various improvements to the asynchronous job executor so it can handle larger loads
more easily and can be configured (number of parallel threads executing the jobs,
retries, etc.).

Ability to configure task administrator groups in a UserTask (similar to how you
already could configure individual task administrators).

Removed limitation on custom implementations of work item handler, event listeners
that had to be placed on global classpath - usually in jbpm-console.war/WEB-INF/lib.
With that custom classes can be added as maven dependencies into the project and will
be registered on underlying components (ksession).

Data Modeler - round trip and source code preservation

Full round trip between Data modeler and Java source code is now supported. No matter
where the Java code was generated (e.g. Eclipse, Data modeller), data modeler will only
update the necessary code blocks to maintain the model updated.

Standardization of the display of tabular data

We have standardized the display of tabular data with a new table widget.
The new table supports the following features:

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

My twitter is exploding with references to this new book for a few days now, so I thought I'd share it with others as well:

Mariano, Maurcio and Esteban have published a new version of their book a few weeks ago, jBPM6 Developer Guide. Mariano gives some more information about what to expect from this book on his blog, including an overview of the chapters.

(click on the image to go to the Packt Publishing website)

While I haven't read the book myself yet, I consider Mariano, Mauricio and Esteban all experts in this area !

Monday, September 8, 2014

Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, has given an interview related to BPM in general and Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite more specifically in the run up to BPM Open House 2014. Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite is the supported Business Process Management platform based on jBPM6. For more information related to this, check out one of my earlier blogs.

In the interview, Jim talks about why Red Hat is interested in the BPM market, what open source means in this context, and a lot more. You can listen to the podcast or read the text transcript.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

The dashboard-builder is used in the jBPM project to offer customizable reports regarding overall status of your processes (using predefined process reports integrated into the jBPM console), but can also be customized by users to define custom, domain-specific reports on whatever data you have available.

David has created a great video on how to use the dashbuilder for example to get insight in changes people are doing to git repositories, and published this video showing for example the activity on various jBPM-related source code repositories over the past few years:

Internally, the workbench is also using a git repository underneath to keep track of the various changes users are doing to their processes etc. in their projects. jBPM 6.2 will include a similar page that can be used to get an overview of who is changing which repositories / projects and drill down into the details, a short video can be found here.

New activity pages can also be used to get an overview of recent changes. Activity pages, that provides insight into projects.

The first Activity page captures events and publishes them as timelines, as a sort of social activities system - which was previous blogged in detail here. This allows events such as "new repository" or "file edited" to be captured, indexed and filtered to be displayed in custom user dashboards. It will come with a number of out of the box filters, but should be user extensible over time.

(click to enlarge)

Early versions of both features should be ready to test drive in the up coming 6.2.0.Beta2 release, end of next week.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

jBPM 6.1 comes with a ton of smaller improvements and bug fixes (done over the last few months
on top of 6.0.1.Final), and also includes some important new features, adding to the foundation
delivered as part of jBPM 6.0.

Now is the time to give some of these new features a try and let us know if you find some issues or have some recommendations! 6.1.0.Final will be released in the next couple of weeks.

From the release notes, here's a short overview of some of the changes:

Embedding forms in external applications

Now you can embed and run process/task forms in your own web application, that live inside the jBPM console, by just adding a JavaScript
library to your webapps.
Look at theUsing forms on client applications section
in the documentation to see the full functionality and usage examples.

Attaching documents to forms

Added a new widget to forms to manage upload documents and store them on process variables. Using the
Pluggable Variable Persistence you'll be able to create your own Marshalling
Strategy and store the document contents on different systems (database, a content management system, ...)
or use the default demo implementation and store them in your file system.

Web Service (SOAP) interface for remote AP

The execution server, that is part of the jbpm-console web tooling, now also comes
with a Web Service interface (in addition to the existing REST, JMS and Java client interfaces).

Deployment descriptors can be configured on various levels for enhanced flexibility to
allow simple override functionality. Detailed definition of deployment descriptor can be found
in section Deployment descriptors of the documentation.

Role-based authorization at runtime for process definitions and process instances

The process definition and process instance view in the jbpm console now also take the
role-based access control restrictions into account that can be defined on the project the
process is defined in. You can limit the visibility of a project (or repository as a whole) by
associating some roles with it that are required to be able to see the project (or
repository). This can be done when creating the repository, or bu using the command line
interface to connect to the execution server. The deployment descriptor (see previous section)
also allows you to further customize these roles at deployment time. At runtime, the views
will check if the current logged in user has one of the necessary roles to be able to see that
process. If not, the user will not see this process or process instance in the process
definition or process instance list respectively.

jBPM installer updates

The installer is updated to support:

Wildfly 8.1 as application server (note that CR1 still uses AS7 by default but more recently dashbuilder has also added support for WildFly so for the Final release we will switch to WildFly by default)

Eclipse BPMN2 Modeler 1.0.2

Eclipse Kepler SR2

jBPM Spring integration

Spring integration has been improved to allow complete configuration of jBPM runtime using
Spring XML. That essentially means there are number of factory beans provided as part of
droolsjbpm-integration module that significanlty simplifies configuration of jBPM. Moreover it
allows various configuration options such as:

Data Modeler - round trip and source code preservation

Full round trip between Data modeler and Java source code is now supported. No matter
where the Java code was generated (e.g. Eclipse, Data modeller), data modeler will only
update the necessary code blocks to maintain the model updated.

Other

Smaller enhancements also include:

Task service (query) improvements, significantly speeding up queries when you have a
large numbers of tasks in the database.

Various improvements to the asynchronous job executor so it can handle larger loads
more easily and can be configured (number of parallel threads executing the jobs,
retries, etc.).

Ability to configure task administrator groups in a UserTask (similar to how you
already could configure individual task administrators).

Removed limitation on custom implementations of work item handler, event listeners
that had to be placed on global classpath - usually in jbpm-console.war/WEB-INF/lib.
With that custom classes can be added as maven dependencies into the project and will
be registered on underlying components (ksession).

Thursday, May 22, 2014

During next week a large percentage of the Drools team, some of the
jBPM team and some community members will be meeting in London
(Chiswick). There won’t be any presentations, we’ll just be in a room
hacking, designing, exchanging ideas and planing. This is open to
community members who wish to contribute towards Drools or jBPM, and
want help with those contributions. This also includes people working on
open source or academic projects that utilise Drools or jBPM. Email Mark (mproctor at codehaus d0t org)
if you want to attend, our locations may very (but within chiswick) each
day.

We will not be able to make the day time available to people looking
for general Drools or jBPM guidance (unless you want to buy us all
lunch ;)). But we will be organising evenings things (like bowling) and
could make Wed or Thu evening open to people wanting general chats and
advice. Email Mark if you’re interested, and after discussing with the
team, we’ll let you know.

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Pere has shared some details on a new feature he's working on for the jBPM 6.1 release, i.e. the ability to embed a form (to start a process or to complete a task) as part of your own application.

With jBPM6, a new form modeler allows you to graphically design your process and task forms (using a WYSIWYG style of editor, dragging an dropping text fields, labels, etc. to create your form). These forms are then used in the jbpm-console to typically ask the end user for input (when you start a process or complete a task).

For example, this form was designed to allow users to request a mortgage by starting the mortgage process.

Pere is developing a simple REST service that will generate a URL that you can use to show the form (that you designed as part of the process) in an iframe in your own application as well. It also includes a simple JavaScript API you can use to communicate with the form.

Keep an eye on his blog, as this is just part 1, more details to follow. Feedback welcome.

There will be plenty of opportunities to meet us as well, like for example the DevNation hacknight on Wednesday, but should you want to meet up but can't find us, try reaching out to us on twitter, @markproctor or @KrisVerlaenen.

There will also be plenty of opportunity to go and watch one of the demos at the JBoss booth, and the Usability Team has set up booth as well where you can go and check out JBoss BPM Suite 6 and provide feedback, so definitely go take a look.

Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Get More Value out of BPM with BPSim Simulation

Thursday, April 10th, 11:00AM Eastern

Business process design with BPMN2 can be complex, with many feasible
options for implementing a business strategy. How can process designers
evaluate alternative approaches before committing to a costly rollout of
an untried process design?

Recently, there have been great strides in new process simulation
tools, intended to answer this question and help analysts optimize their
process designs before any real data is available to test them against.
The BPSim standard is now emerging to provide a common framework for
defining and exchanging simulation data in conjunction with BPMN2
models.

Join BPM.com's Nathaniel Palmer with guest
Kris Verlaenen to learn how BPSim compatible tools can help you
understand how business process designs will perform in practice, and
where to look to improve and optimize them.

As part of the presentation we will see a live demonstration of Red
Hat's new process simulation tool, included with JBoss BPM Suite.
Attendees will also receive access to the developer version of BPM
Suite, and the exclusive demonstration models used in the presentation.

Why You Should Attend:

Learn How to Use Business Process Simulation for Data-Driven Process Excellence

Gain Both Actionable Ideas and a Complete Working BPM Suite with Process Simulation Capabilities

Business Architects and BPM Practitioners Looking to Get Started with Process Simulation

Business Analysts Seeking to Leverage BPM and Simulation for Data-Driven Process Optimization

Anyone Looking to Get Started with BPM, BPMN2 Process Modeling, or Process Simulation

Nathaniel Palmer
CTO & VP, Business Process Management, Inc.

A best-selling author, practitioner, and rated as the #1 most
influential thought leader in BPM by independent research, Nathaniel is
co-author of a dozen books on innovation and knowledge work, including
“Intelligent BPM” (FSI 2013), “How Knowledge Workers Get Things Done”
(FSI 2012), “Social BPM” (Future Strategies), “Mastering the
Unpredictable” (MK Press, 2008), “Excellence in Practice (FSI 2007), as
well as the “Encyclopedia of Database Systems” (Springer Reference,
2007) and “The X-Economy” (Texere, 2001). Nathaniel has been the Chief
Architect for projects involving investments of $200 Million or more,
and frequently tops the lists of the most recognized names in his field.
He was the first individual named as Laureate in Workflow.

Kris Verlaenen
jBPM Project Lead, Red Hat

Kris is the JBoss jBPM project lead and the lead technical architect
behind the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6. After finishing his Ph.D. in
computer science in 2008, he joined JBoss. In 2010, he became the jBPM
project lead. He also has a keen interest in the healthcare domain, one
of the areas that has shown a great need for a flexible processes and
advanced rule and event-processing integration.

Friday, March 14, 2014

The webinar we recently did on JBoss BPM Suite 6.0, including a 15-20min demo of the web tooling in action, is now available on demand. Click the "Register Now" button below to register and you'll be able to view the entire webinar on demand.

Automate workflows now with a leading open source BPM platform

Looking
to build powerful workflow automation solutions? Red Hat JBoss BPM
Suite 6.0, now generally available, brings Business Activity Monitoring
and Business Process Management capabilities from the jBPM community
project together in to a single, integrated product.

Join us in this webinar to learn:

How
to get started quickly with the fully integrated User Interface,
Process Simulation and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) tools.

The best use cases for running the process execution as a stand alone server vs. embedded mode.

How to seamlessly manage decision logic with business rules optimization

What's coming next...

Speakers:

Prakash Aradhya, Product Management Director, JBoss BPM and BRMS Platforms, Red Hat Prakash
Aradhya is responsible for driving the product strategy and roadmap for
JBoss Enterprise BRMS and BPM products. He has over 15 years of
experience in product development and product management in the
middleware software industry.

Dr Kris Verlaenen, Principal Software Engineer, Lead BPM Architect, Red Hat Kris
Verlaenen leads the jBPM Project effort and is also one of the core
developers of the Drools project, to which he started contributing in
2006. After finishing his PhD in Computer Science in 2008, he joined
JBoss full-time and became the Drools Flow lead. He has a keen interest
in the healthcare domain, one of the areas that have already shown to
have a great need for a unified process, rule and event processing
framework.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite is the JBoss platform for Business Process
Management (BPM). It enables enterprise business and IT users to
document, simulate, manage, automate and monitor business processes and
policies. It is designed to empower business and IT users to collaborate
more effectively, so business applications can be changed more easily
and quickly.

As a result, you can now get official support for developing and deploying your jBPM6 applications.

It might be important to know that JBoss BPM Suite 6 is a super-set of JBoss BRMS 6, so you automatically get the a solution integrating business processes with business rules, complex event processing and business resource planner.

About Me

Kris is a Senior Principal Software Engineer at JBoss, by Red Hat, where he leads the jBPM project (an open-source business process management (BPM) suite), and is also part of the Drools project (an open-source Java rules engine). The jBPM project consists of a lightweight workflow engine in Java that support native BPMN 2.0 execution and various tools and features around that to support business processes throughout their entire life cycle.

Kris did a PhD in Computer Science at the Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven, Belgium. His main research area is policy-based management,
i.e. using declarative policy rules for configuring services, resulting
in highly-configurable, reusable services. He has experience and a
great intrest in policy-based and rule-based systems, workflow
management, service-oriented software development and clinical decision
support.

In his spare time, Kris also does athletics (ROBA) and plays volleybal (Berg Op Wijgmaal, Heren2).